Franchise tag or not, Bears must make call on Kyle Fuller with good cornerbacks available

The vibe was much different at the NFL scouting combine a year ago, when the timing of the “underwear Olympics,” as it’s called, was such that the end of the event led right into the opening of free agency.

Agents hurried around downtown for meetings at all hours of the day and night, and deals were born. The 48-hour negotiating period opened a day after the combine ended and three days after teams were back home, they were headlong into free agency.

While a few deals surely will be hatched this week, the calendar has shifted. NFL teams will leave Indianapolis on Monday and have a week until the 48-hour negotiating window opens March 12, two days before the start of the new league year March 14. That means everyone is operating with broader hypotheticals, not wanting to show their hand. One veteran agent said he’s not going to waste any time meeting with teams this week because it’s pointless with the lag before the start of free agency.

Bears general manager Ryan Pace will meet with media Wednesday morning before new coach Matt Nagy has a news conference. Pace no doubt will be pressed on his plans for the latest stage of the organization’s rebuild and it’s hard to imagine he will shed a whole lot of light on the process.

There’s no doubt he will be asked about the status of cornerback Kyle Fuller, who is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent. Prevailing thinking of those polled Tuesday is the Bears will not use the franchise tag on Fuller, which would come at an estimated price tag of more than $15 million. The deadline to use the tag is 3 p.m. Tuesday and it will be interesting if Pace leans either direction or sits squarely on the fence when asked about it.

“He won’t get tagged,” texted one source not affiliated with the Bears.

“I don’t think they will use the tag,” said a personnel director for another club in the market for cornerbacks. “It’s a deep corner class in free agency.”

He’s certainly right about that. In what, across the board, is a less than stellar free-agent class, there seems to be a good crop of cornerbacks and quarterbacks. The Rams’ Trumaine Johnson is expected to be unrestricted after the franchise tagged him the last two years. Aaron Colvin (Jaguars), Malcolm Butler (Patriots), Bashaud Breeland (Redskins) and E.J. Gaines (Bills) are just a few options. There are more.

Even if the Bears don’t use the tag it doesn’t mean they would rule out bringing Fuller back. It just means they don’t want to commit to him for just one year at a salary that could make efforts to hammer out a multi-year contract complex. Look what happened with wide receiver Alshon Jeffery for Pace & Co. The Bears used the franchise tag on him and he did what most players do in that scenario, he used that one-year figure as a baseline for an annual average salary. Jeffery wasn’t right on the number of $14.6 million but near enough to it that the Bears never came close to getting a multi-year deal done.

It’s hard to imagine the Bears want to pay Fuller $15 million per season for multiple years. He’s had just one outstanding year and it came after missing all of the 2016 season, which is what makes deriving a value for the player challenging. Whether or not the Bears would consider the transition tag, which is expected to be around $13 million, remains to be seen. The same issue would be created. The player would likely desire to use that figure as a baseline for an annual average salary. There are seven cornerbacks averaging $13 million or more per season right now and two of them are Stephon Gilmore and A.J. Bouye, players the Bears pursued in free agency last March. It’s possible Fuller winds up in that range if he’s on the open market and — who knows — maybe the Bears would pay that.

Sure, the Bears are flush with more than $60 million in projected cap space right now, a figure that will climb above $70 million when the team gets around to releasing quarterback Mike Glennon, an expected move. That doesn’t mean tagging Fuller is the right way to go. It would create added time — until July 16 — to come to agreement on a multi-year contract but of the last four players the Bears have used the franchise tag on (Jeffery, Henry Melton, Matt Forte and Lance Briggs) only Forte was signed to a multi-year contract before the deadline. The franchise tag can create friction between the club and the player and that’s why in most cases it’s a last resort for the team.

The Bears still can negotiate with Fuller and there will be plenty of options in free agency and a couple of prime candidates for the first round at No. 8 overall. Sometimes the buzz around town proves to be wrong. Maybe Pace has something to say about it Wednesday.